As Long as Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice from Colonization to Standing Rock

Gilio-Whitaker (American Indian studies, California State Univ. San Marcos; coauthor, All the Real Indians Died Off) aims for this work to serve as a primer for Native American rights activists dealing with environmental protection, pursuing the complex intersections of environmentalism and Native rights. The 2015–17 protests on Standing Rock tribal lands against the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) provide a dramatic touchstone for discussion of key aspects of environmental justice theory as applied against a historical backdrop of American Indian nations. Long-standing conflicts between environmental groups wanting pristine wilderness without humans, and Native claims to historic land and water uses are examined. Among the first books to analyze the DAPL Standing Rock protests, contrasting Madelon L. Finkel's Pipeline Politics: Assessing the Benefits and Harms of Energy Policy, Gilio-Whitaker's review should go a long way toward finding common ground in the modern political arena.